The present invention concerns a crimp contact used for connecting electrical wires.
The contact disclosed is of the type consisting of a strip of electrically conductive material designed to be crimped so as to form a substantially square shape and to grip one or more wires, whether enamelled or not, between its crimped ends. This type of contact is used mainly for connecting wires in electric motors, transformers and other electrical units.
As is known, contacts of this type are usually coated with insulating material and must fit easily into the slots or seats of electrical units, which are often extremely small.
The contacts known to prior art have sharp edges and pointed corners and are relatively large sized (approximately 8 to 10 mm long and 4 to 5 mm wide). As a result, they have two principal disadvantages.
First of all, the angular shape makes them difficult to insulate since the insulating material applied to the contacts tends to tear (or fails to be applied properly) at the sharp edges and corners of the contacts themselves.
Secondly, because of their relatively large size, crimp contacts cannot be used in the place of ordinary soldered contacts or preformed pressure fitted contacts. In addition the space for contacts inside electrical units is often insufficient for crimp contacts of this kind.
A crimp contact smaller In size than previous ones and with rounded corners and edges has been developed to overcome these disadvantages. This crimp contact formed the subject-matter of Italian patent application No. VR91U000031.
The latter crimp contact, although it overcomes the disadvantages of the ones known previously, itself presents certain disadvantages. Like the previous ones, this contact too is made of a single material (usually copper or aluminum) and is applied to the wires by a simple hot crimping operation, that is to say, by heating the copper strip so as to melt or burn the enamel coating of the wires and bending the ends of the strip in such a way as to form the crimp contact.
This method, however, does not guarantee a perfect and reliable contact between the wires under all conditions. A poor contact will result, for example, when the contact is not handled with sufficient care or is applied to a single wire (in which case the wire tends to come loose at the slightest jerk or accidental pull).
The principal aim of the present invention is to eliminate the disadvantages of the crimp contacts known to prior art by providing a crimp contact capable of guaranteeing a perfect, reliable contact between the wires it connects, under all conditions of use.
Another aim of the invention is to provide a crimp contact that has negligible electrical resistance and that is very economical to make.